


An Archipelago of Light

by wintercreek



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-09-11
Updated: 2009-09-11
Packaged: 2017-10-05 17:12:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,528
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/44063
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wintercreek/pseuds/wintercreek
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John shrugs. "Wouldn't be the first time I took on a responsibility unprepared," he says, thinking of Atlantis and seeing a coin tumbling over and over through the sunset air. He's been overthinking his whole life; his impulsive choices have turned out to be the best. "I could figure it out. Teyla'll help, right?"</p>
            </blockquote>





	An Archipelago of Light

"Teyla, I know there are plenty of things that are normal practices for Pegasus even though they seem weird to me, but _please_ do not tell me that this is one of them." John looks desperate and awkward and a bit wild, but his hands are steady.

Teyla lifts an eyebrow. "Given that we maintain small population sizes - or rather, that our small populations are maintained thusly rather forcibly by the Wraith - a number of traditions have arisen to keep our various peoples healthy. New blood is essential to the survival of any given group."

Rodney coughs. "That's very euphemistically correct, and I'm impressed that Pegasus as a whole has evidently figured out a galactic solution to inbreeding, but _seriously_. Are you saying that Sheppard just being handed this - this -"

"It's a baby, McKay." Ronon looks unimpressed. "They need to send her to a new home, since her parents died in the last raid. Tradition runs that the next prosperous-looking group to come through the 'gate has been sent by the Ancestors to give a family-less child a home." He pulls out a pair of thin-rimmed glasses and perches them on his nose; when Woolsey found out that Ronon was far from illiterate but rather disliked paperwork because the fine print gave him a headache, he'd had Keller issue Ronon reading glasses. "I'll go consult with the local elders and find out if the terms are the usual ones."

John watches Ronon depart and shakes his head. "I still can't believe he's a lawyer. He had me fooled all this time."

"Really, John, do not change the subject." Teyla looks sternly at him and then nods to the baby in his arms. "What will you name her?"

"Name her?!" Rodney explodes. "It's preposterous to think Sheppard will keep her, much less name and raise her. Atlantis is no place for - er, that is -" He backpedals in the face of Teyla's disapproving look.

"No place for a child? And yet I have heard no objections to Torren's presence there. No place is truly safe from all possible harm, but if such a place existed I would hardly raise a child there. Children must be able to experience the world with all its beauty and dangers to live fully." Teyla strokes the baby's head and holds out her hands.

To his surprise, John tightens his grip. Inexplicably, he doesn't want to hand the baby over to anyone, not even Teyla. His gut says to keep her, and he's used to trusting his gut when the ground beneath his feet is uncertain.

Teyla smiles at him.

"Are you prepared to raise a child? Do you know anything about children?" Rodney demands of John.

John shrugs. "Wouldn't be the first time I took on a responsibility unprepared," he says, thinking of Atlantis and seeing a coin tumbling over and over through the sunset air. He's been overthinking his whole life; his impulsive choices have turned out to be the best. "I could figure it out. Teyla'll help, right?"

"Of course I will. As will Ronon and Rodney, I'm sure. I don't think you'll have any shortage of assistance." Her smile creases the corners of her eyes, deep and real. "And Torren will be glad of a playmate near his age, when they are both a little older."

Ronon's return precludes any further sputtering by Rodney. He brings a man with a long scroll of paper and a sort of folding table in his wake. The man turns out to be the clerk for the settlement and he gravely records John's full name and parentage. There's hardly any risk of John's family having already taken in a child, but he cooperates all the same. When the clerk asks for the gate symbols of John's homeworld, he stumbles and is grateful to Teyla for stepping in gracefully to describe them as nomadic. She offers New Athos as a contact point and the rest of the record continues smoothly.

John misses most of what happens while Teyla's talking; he's caught up in examining the baby girl in his arms. Button nose, honey skin not unlike Teyla's, and barely any hair on her small head. She has her eyes screwed shut in sleep, which is probably all that's keeping her from crying and him from his first parenting panic attack. It's weird beyond measure to think that he's a parent now, that this is his child - his _daughter_ \- but it's weirder still to think that he could ever give her up. Something in John unfolds, unsteady as the colts on the estate where he grew up.

Teyla touches his arm and brings his attention back to the clerk. "Her name?"

He doesn't even have to think about it, just opens his mouth and lets it tumble out. "Shenandoah." Before Rodney can start objecting, John turns to him and says, "We can call her Shannon, mostly, but. I grew up in Virginia, okay? I learned the story in school and I don't know if it's true but they told us that 'Shenandoah' meant 'daughter of the stars.' And - she is."

Rodney's evidently too astonished to protest the plural pronoun, or maybe he just knows that John's child will be beloved of them all, raised by them all, as Torren has been. He only nods at John's explanation and reaches out a wondering hand to the baby, running his fingers over her delicate hand. "Shenandoah." Then he looks up with a grin and says, "Better change the song before you sing it to her. She'll get confused and think you're leaving her for someone named 'Missouri.'"

John laughs a bit, reining it in before he wakes Shannon. "Yeah, Rodney, let's get on that when we get home. Top priority."

Ronon leans in toward the clerk and murmurs, "Well, this one took like I predicted. Pleased?"

The man nods. "A good bonding, Ancestors be praised." He hands Ronon something, surreptitiously. "We worried for no reason, I see. It's not always easy to predict at first sight who will accept the gift of a child. Would you like to come see the tapestry?" he asks them all, changing topics.

Teyla accepts for them all and they make the short walk back to the main hall of the village. A woven star chart takes up one long wall. The clerk shows the 'gate symbols for New Athos to two small boys standing by; they search the tapestry until they find the correct star and begin stitching near it, precarious on their ladders. One boy works with pale yarn shot through with what look like silver filaments - they must shine in the lamp light of the evenings. The other works with yellow, finer fiber, stitching symbols. John peeks over the clerk's shoulder at his scroll and realizes that the symbols are Shannon's name in the language of this world.

"My apprentices," the clerk says, gesturing at the boys. "They begin with the public record, here, before they are allowed to work with the scrolls. We have recorded the names and new homes of all those we have sent forth for the past fifty generations. When the Wraith attack, we lift up the panels in the floor beneath the tapestry and drop it from its hangings. The stone has kept it faithfully safe."

John flew a night flight to the base on Hawai'i when he was training; the glowing arc of the islands in the dark expanse of ocean is an image he's carried with him ever since. After the long journey of uncertainty, trusting and doubting his instruments the whole while, the lights below him were wordless confirmation that he'd done right all along. His best efforts had led him to where he was meant to be, and the glittering shapes there had been waiting to guide him safely in.

He looks at the tapestry, with its spread of flickering homes and neat names, feeling the memory reach up for him. Then he looks down at Shannon, tiny in his arms. What John knows now is what he knew then, what he'll teach Shannon someday. He names the unfolding feeling for what it's been since he saw her: recognition, and certainty, and love.

John looks up in time to see Rodney prying Ronon's hand open and extracting something, presumably what the clerk passed him earlier. "You took a _bet_ about whether John would take the baby?" he hisses. Ronon shrugs eloquently. "Knew he would. Kid's gotta get toy money from somewhere." Teyla steps up behind both of them and delivers an open-handed smack to the back of both their heads. It's gentle, and she smiles as she does so.

Shannon picks that moment to wake in John's arms, but instead of the expected wailing she produces a delicate coo and works to focus her eyes on his face. "Hey, kid," he whispers. "That's your family." With a soft smile he amends, "Our family," and closes his eyes, picturing the Hawai'ian archipelago again, Rodney and Teyla and Ronon and now Shannon's names overlaid on it. The best proof he could ever ask for that this is just right, just where he should be.


End file.
